TALES FROM BEYOND THE FRINGE : Victor Lazarin Stands Again
by Black Waltz 0
Summary: Dr. Victor Lazarin battles internal demons after the events of Blighthaven and the rest of the Aurelian research expedition worry for him. [Contains some spoilers]
1. Chapter 1

TALES FROM BEYOND THE FRINGE:

Victor Lazarin Stands Again

By Black Waltz 0

In about forty five minutes he was going to die.

A small collective of alchemists and subordinates clustered around the back chamber in the Aurelian exo-lab the good doctor had made into his private quarters, after the webbing and infestation of giant man-eating spiders had been burned out first. Mordesh scientists of varying colours, tones and body modifications looked upon one another and the closed doors in dismay. "What will we do?" One asked in a deep, metallic-tinged voice, turning to the others for advice.

Another hid their concern behind artificial blank-lensed eyes incapable of expression. "We cannot lose his expertise and guidance as close as we are to the solution." He reminded his colleagues, but like the rest of them he could think of no remedies to their problem.

"I am sure we all experience his grief over the loss of such a promising protégé," their head analyst spoke up, her words both soft and sultry, "his child, no less. Our sympathy runs deep, but this is ridiculous. We must extract him from the premises, and soon."

"Didn't he pop someone one when we sent in a medic to check on him?" An aurin clad in his scientist uniform proclaimed from the crowd; a half-pint biochemist in a field of giants.

"Yes. Dmitriev, right?" One of them pondered and they looked about amidst themselves.

He was the large, broad mordesh at the back of the group, nursing what was obviously a very bad black eye. He smiled at the sudden attention, his prosthetic metal jaw clicking the grin into place as he shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. "The fault is mine. The grieving, they can be unpredictable. I should have remembered this."

"But we must do something!" The first mordesh who had spoken responded with urgency, clenching his fists. "If Dr. Lazarin lapses, we are lost. What hope would we have left?"

"What time remains?" The head analyst asked the others calmly, but her voice was edged with steel.

Dmitriev checked his datachron. All mordesh members of the blighthaven expedition were required to log their infusion times into the database, mostly to keep an eye on everyone remotely and to warn the team of an impending episode if one of their men or women turned forgetful or went missing. None of them were exempt from this little instance of paperwork, not even Lazarin, and his name and last log date were already lit up with an alarming red light. The mordesh sighed. "Not a whole lot, Ekaterine. He has until the hour." He explained.

Ekaterine nodded as she accepted this information. "Then we must move swiftly. You there!" She announced, indicating the worried-looking aurin standing waist-height with them. "There was a person here previously, the newly needed alchemical assistant Lazarin required recently for his lab work. I recall you two chatting before the… incident. Where are they now?"

The aurin's ears perked up and he wrinkled his nose a little. "You mean the one the doctor hired? They smelt kinda funny, like blood and burnt hair? What do you need _them_ for?"

"Ah!" One of the mordesh scientists exclaimed, brightening by the woman's side. "They did seem to be a close friend of the doctor and they were present during the strain ambush. Perhaps they could persuade him out of this foolishness?"

"They also disassembled his daughter, or so I hear." Another said.

The group hesitated for a moment. Ekaterine shook them out of it. "It's still worth a try. Aurin, you are fast on your feet. Can you find them?"

The hairs on the back of his neck and his tail prickled. He half-twisted, coiling the slender yet powerful muscles in his legs. Egghead scientist he might have been, for his species, but the primal pattern inside of him still knew that he could run like _lightning_. "I think I saw them mangling wildlife outside of the exo-lab!" He announced, darting away. "I'll be back as soon as I can!"

When the fluff-eared biochemist was merely the echo of rapid footfalls down the metal corridor Ekaterine turned back to the others and indicated the two largest of her kind there; the bruised and sore Dmitriev along with a quiet biologist with most of his mouth rotted away. The skeletal teeth and bones were visible through a translucent orange vitalus tank bolted to his face. "You two will stand watch over this door. Nobody may go in or out until we return with weapons. The rest of you, and myself included, we must bear the shame and sift sadly through the corpses of the recent dead. We require artillery, and an abundance of it."

Many of those that had died in the assault had been armed soldiers; guards deployed to watch over their expedition. The rest had been their colleagues and peers in the field, but there was no time to mourn them as of yet. Dmitriev folded his arms, looking up at Ekaterine solemnly. "I'm afraid I can see where you plan to take this, Eka."

"Yes. It must be done for the sake of all." She touched the mordesh with the metal-tinged voice lightly on the arm, on the part that still had flesh and sensation left. "Prepare an infusion right away. We will find the doctor ravenous and regretfully reap him, or we will bar the exits and infuse him by force."

At least, for all of them, one thing was clear.

The man in the other room was _not_ allowed to die.


	2. Chapter 2

Victor could hear the muffled echo of conversation from the other side of the door at his back, hushed mutterings of many voices grouped together as one, but for as good as his refined sense of hearing served him he paid the murmurs no heed. There was no reason to, really. Not anymore.

He sat upon the floor in the middle of his private chambers, legs crossed and hands on his knees in almost a meditative position, the headpiece of his hazmat suit removed for the moment and resting by his side on the ground. The once bright blue vitalus that sustained him now clouded in the tanks riddled throughout his form, murky, almost teal in colour and rife with the diseases that throttled his body. He would have changed his tanks more than an hour ago, and in fact the good doctor had been gearing up to do just that, but mere moments before he could clear the transfer pipes and bolt them into the access ports on his shoulder he had just… stopped.

Perhaps most of it was merely muscle memory by this point, but it was on this day that Victor Lazarin realized that every infusion he'd made, a ritual he had performed every day for almost eighty years was a choice, a pledge to go on, so to speak, but like every other pledge it could be broken; disavowed. He'd remained like that with the pipe in his hands for goodness knows how long, until the chemical stench of vitalus began to emanate from the tubes and into the open air, so he dropped it. Dark artificial lifeblood ran onto the floor; made a small puddle beneath his workbench. Irritating.

Someone behind him had come up around that point, could have tapped him or placed a hand on his shoulder and he thought he might have snarled and reacted in a way to make that body skitter away without another syrupy, plying word, but all he could remember clearly now was how he had packed the rest of his vitalus away for another to use, lurched to the center of the room, and then sat down. That would be enough. He was done.

Lucy was dead and he was having a hell of a time trying to think of a reason to go on. When the strain had crept into the laboratory many had died to tooth and claw and infectious mutagen. His hazmat suit had protected him from the worst of it and he'd killed many of the foul creatures in a mad rush to reach the synthesis chamber, but eventually one of the strain corruptors crept in too close; sinking yellowed teeth through the barrier of his suit and into his leg. He'd gone down, unable to regenerate the damaged, dead flesh quickly enough to stand again. He'd killed what he could from the ground and soon the lab fell silent again, free from the corrupted squish of flesh and the pained cries of fallen and overwhelmed exiles close by.

All save for the sound of Lucy over his commlink, screaming.

He'd blacked out for a bit then, under the extreme duress of pain and the strain creeping into his wound, surrounded by the bodies of friend and foe alike. He'd done something else at that point too, gotten his hands around a soldier's weapon of some sort, the same thing that had flushed out the spiders and webbing from the exo-lab. Flamethrower, still with some juice left. He'd burned the growing strain off his leg, deep enough to cleanse and cauterize, but painful. Unsightly. It could be repaired later.

And then his assistant had come, why, no, had he called them? He could not remember now, but they had brought weapons and bore the half-mad, eager for carnage glint in their eyes that he'd come to expect from such a helper. He'd implored them to ignore him and find his daughter. His little girl.

Gods. He could remember a time when she'd been so small and healthy and all the years stretched out before her life spoke only of her brightness and promise. His wife had succumbed to darkness due to the complications of her birth and he'd never thought he would be able to juggle single parentage and a full-time career at the same time, but as his minutes ticked down in the present it was so clear to him now; the memories.

Long days and nights in the lab, minding a toddler and then a small child playing with rubber tubing and empty beakers under his feet, mixing up water with various dyes added so she could pretend to be a chemist. Hastily made, poorly implemented food until Lucy had grown enough to cook for the both of them. Alchemical journals and scientific reports instead of bedtime stories and fairy tales, but she had loved them just the same.

Perhaps it was no wonder she had turned out just like he was. He could never have been prouder of her, but in that it had spelled her doom.

A gentle pattering dusted the floor on the far end of the chamber. Victor detected it almost immediately, but it didn't mean much to him now. By this point he was getting hungry, it felt like he hadn't eaten anything in days. Was this it? It felt somewhat like that night on Grismara all those years ago, when he had in desperation concocted the vitalus serum before he could go mad. The ravenous onset… did it bring him fear, or a sense of peace?

When the contagion had spread lighting fast across his home world, carried in the blood and fluids of those unfortunate enough to have supped on his everlife elixir it did not only leap from body to ravenous body as sharp incisor met unprotected flesh; after a while it had begun to pervade the very air they breathed. Grismara fell into a fetid, grey-green shroud, and of the cognizant mordesh left over to the plague it was the children who first started to choke on its fumes.

They'd retreated to a bunker deep underground where the contagion could not possibly reach, the Widow had hoped, and they had vitalus now for treating the sick, but it could not push back the physical corruption that had already set in. He'd still been whole back then, sitting by Lucy's bedside whenever he had a spare few minutes to dedicate to her between treating others and searching frantically for a stop-gap cure, holding his daughter's perfect, light-pink hand even as the green-tinged decay of the contagion wormed its way through her.

"Lucy, my child," he had croaked, enclosing her small fingers in his, "forgive me. This is all my fault."

And what did she say in response, her eyes half-lidded in wretched weariness? Ah, he remembered now.

She had smiled at him without blame. "It's okay, father. Alchemy is fickle. Endemic with errors. You… you were only trying to help."

Sometime later, when his own flesh began to rot and wither and his hair had started to fall out it was honest to goodness a sort of _relief_ to feel such twisted pain. Fair. Just. He deserved this for what he had done.

Just as she had never deserved such an agonizing, bewildering way to die. It should have been him instead!

More movement, this time noted from the corner of his eye. A small, squat shadow, low to the ground. Victor made a mental note of it. _God_, he was starving. Starving for meat.

His hands clenched into claws. He gritted his teeth.

It was almost time.


	3. Chapter 3

Dmitriev stood guard alongside his stoic companion, privately wishing he had a medispray or a cold compress for the swelling on his face. He was using the cool metal modification on the back of his hand instead, as it was better than nothing. The others had not returned yet but it still had only been a few minutes. There was time.

"Do you think we'll have to kill Doctor Lazarin?" He asked his fellow guard, needing something to break the anxious silence between them.

His friend stood straight ahead, unmoving; unblinking. The injured medic thought he would have made an excellent store mannequin. "Not sure yet." He responded after a pause, fleshless lips clicking behind his vitalus veil.

"I don't blame him, you know." Dmitriev continued, much to the other's chagrin, but the taller mordesh turned his head slightly towards him anyway.

"Oh?"

"He's in shock over the incident and he has a great burden to bear. Guilt is only but one facet of that burden. Have you never lost one so close to you, Mishka?" He asked, knowing that feeling all too well, although it had been well over a lifetime ago. It was why he couldn't begrudge the other doctor the shiner he'd received even though it stung.

Mishka seemed to look down at the floor, but it was hard to tell because his bright orange eyes lacked pupils and irises. "I have had no one. No reason for grief. I am content with this." He said.

Dmitriev removed his hand from his face and refreshed the log of the vitalus infusion files on his datachron for about the thirtieth time that hour. He also let out his fifth resigned sigh in as many minutes. "Perhaps destroying the doctor at this point would be the greater mercy. To send him back to his daughter and, fate permitting, the embrace of his wife. She was quite the looker, back in the day."

"So I have heard."

Both guards fell silent again.

There was not much else to talk about until the artillery arrived.

xxx

Victor's nerves were on fire, getting delirious, hard to think. He had risen and he was pacing back and forth in his room as if he were impatiently waiting for something, tightening and loosening his hands hard enough that he was leaving small, crescent-shaped indents along the surface of his palms. He was going to head out there soon, and though his body and mind may not be his own at that point it would be a conclusion; an ending. A much overdue one.

He was panting slightly, barely on the cusp of uncontrollable hunger and rage. It would be a fitting end for the great Dr. Victor Lazarin, the man who killed death, to be slain shrieking and tearing at flesh as one of the miserable monsters he had spent the remainder of his immortal existence trying to save. How ironic. A tale of hubris, one that would be used to caution the wise someday, provided there would be any mordesh left to heed such advice.

A jarring, humanizing pang went right through him at that point and he ceased his erratic movements, the vitalus left in his tanks nothing more than lifeless near-grey slush by now. His hands went to his face and he held them there for a time, sinking down to his knees again. What did it matter anymore, anyway? He had persisted for all mordesh, for all the billions his elixir had put into the ground and even longer for the millions that lived still, but despite his rotten body that did not age he wasn't some omnipotent god of medicine, clearly. He was but a single man. Genius, yes, of course, but fallible, with limits he hadn't cared to measure until today.

The ambush again. After his assistant had rushed off to the synthesis chamber on their hale, functioning legs he'd been able to patch up whatever tissue and nerve damage he'd dealt to himself with a medikit and his own, private vitalus blend that encouraged rapid regeneration of his cells. He'd managed to stagger to his feet, slowly at first, and then the doctor could manage a frail hobble, picking up speed until he reached the final chamber under his own power. He had heard sobbing over the commlink, gentle weeping, then implorations for help. Begging. So hungry. He'd heard it all.

His dead heart had never beaten quite so fast until that day.

And… he didn't know what he should have expected, really. The strain had penetrated into the lab, had gotten into everything, their expedition; his leg. Lucy had been alone at the time in what he'd thought was a sterile environment. She would have had no way to defend herself.

In spite of this he had limped into the chamber just in time to watch his aggressive assistant wipe a mixture of blood, vitalus fluid and strain juice off the surface of their weapon. There had been some messy splash-back, but for once the intern seemed solemn, brow furrowed as they expressed a sad sigh. They stuffed the juiced-up handkerchief into their pocket, but it would have to be destroyed later along with everything the strain had touched.

"I'm sorry, doc." They said, looking back at him with the dismembered remains of his child at their feet. "It got into her. She was losing herself. It had to be done."

He was thankful now that the exile he had approved to be his assistant did not waste words or soppy sentiments at the severity of the situation – that they were content to stand back and do nothing as Victor ran to that pile of slain, infected flesh and bellow as though he were a dying man, falling to his knees and sobbing harder than he ever had for Mina, for his people; for anyone. Lucy had been the last one left, the last bastion of his fortitude. He may have become an accursed and wretched thing, hated by too many to count, but he had _never_ been alone. That one source of love and pride in a sea of derision had made all the difference, kept him from punishing himself to death, just as he was doing right now.

The worst agony of all was he could not have touched her – the pragmatic scientist within him knew that her flesh was infected beyond all aid and he could not have gathered her up in his arms like his body was clamoring to do. She could have no proper, respectful burial. No casket, no sugarblossoms crowning her gentle head, not even any prayer. He had already long since forgotten the words.

They eventually had to burn her in an incinerator alongside the other fallen that day, topped by the slimy corpses of the strain that had been their murderers. The ashes left behind were blended together, mixed with dozens of the dead. There was no technique to tell what particles of the dust were hers. He'd wanted better for her, far better, but again he was a pragmatist at heart. This was all they could do.

In the midst of his feverish ruminations Victor saw a flash of gold run under the table. It was speckled – had four legs. His first, near-ravenous instinct was to pounce on it and his lip curled back into a snarl. What was that? Creature. Small. Scuttling. Belonged to…

With the lightning-quick reflexes of a scrab raising its tail to strike Dr. Lazarin lunged down at the golden blur of movement and filled his hands with writhing, squeaking fur.

Once Lucy was but ash on the wind far, far from her place of birth he'd had to go through her belongings; pack them away in her stead. He'd thought that maybe he could take something small to remember her by, something that was not her research or her books or the alchemy that had killed her. Perhaps a piece of jewelry, a relic of her past, just some kind of trinket that spoke of the capable woman she had grown into. He had the memories, but he was ageless. Memories would eventually fade. It was his fear.

However his daughter had been far too much like him. She had given all she was to the cure for the contagion. Nothing amongst her belongings deviated from that cause. Nothing left. She was gone.

The golden jabbit flailed helplessly as it battled to free itself from Victor's clutches. There was no explanation for how it had gotten inside his quarters, it couldn't possibly have reached the door control panel, but the soft-furred vermin kicked at the air as though it were trying to run in place, long mordesh fingers wrapped around its fragile shoulder bones and throat.

He hesitated for a moment, his hands trying not to shake. He'd expected a lab slank, or something with-

_**-Flesh!-**_

-but this was one of Lucy's experiments. Her animals, one she'd planned to dissect earlier but had never quite gotten around to it. That was unlike her, his little girl had often proposed that efficiency was her middle name.

He tried to remember her excited talk about the animals of Blighthaven, but things were getting fuzzy now, almost too fuzzy for his mind's eye to see.

…_Exposure to exanite… increased empathetic capabilities… marked resistance to strain infection… greater intelligence… actually, father, I am almost certain that at times she may feel as I feel, interpret my body language, and even-_

It was full of meat. Blood. Warm. Smell warm.

_**Flesh! Flesh!**_

_I do not think it is prudent to consider dissection at this time. There is much I may learn from her…_

His hands constricted. The jabbit squealed. Unnoticed tears began to run down the ancient doctor's face.

_And, as a personal aside, she is rather cute. Ahahaha._

"Lucy…" He growled through razor-sharp teeth.

Something hard and metallic clinked against his ring finger and the pad of his palm as he squeezed the life out of the animal. It was a sharp sensation he had not expected and so he loosened his grip, holding the trembling jabbit by the scruff as he turned it over to search for the source of discomfort. It could not have been a bite or a scratch, not painful enough, and yet…

He found the answer right away. The creature was wearing a collar; it looked like it was made out of some kind of silver facsimile – a thin chain with a small, circular nameplate on the front. It was this he had felt pinching between his fingers. Lucy must have booted up the 3D fabricator and manufactured it without his knowledge. Such a little, insignificant thing.

The tag was around the wrong way so Victor turned it over with surprising, verge-of-sanity delicacy. It had his child's commlink code engraved into the metal. He also read the inscription right below it.

"Goldie." He said in a rough voice. "… Your name is Goldie."

The jabbit didn't run away when he set the terrified, shaking creature on the floor with all the gentleness he could muster and Dr. Lazarin let out a tortured, wailing, bone-chilling howl, and with it he vented the frustration, the anger and the pain he'd had all built up inside. There was much more where that came from but it was a pressure release, to keep the boiler from exploding. It cut through every living and undead soul in the exo-lab like a sword; even Ekaterine and her entourage who were busy loading up their weapons with fresh shells. There was a rawness to it that rent the nerves, but it was liberating. Cleansing. Needed.

He was hoarse with heaving, dry sobs when Victor dug his hand into one of his deep pockets and pulled out a huge, capped heavy syringe that glowed with bright blue, viscous liquid. Without even bothering to roll back his sleeve or apply a tourniquet to his arm the doctor jammed it in with a hundred years of practiced surgical precision and slammed the high-density vitalus serum directly into his veins. It wasn't going to revitalize the dark goop in his guts and his tanks, but it would push the ravening madness away for another twenty minutes; thirty at most. Enough time to work his way through a full infusion properly.

For a short while he just sat there on the ground again, waiting for his pains and shakes to subside and also to catch his breath. The fog in his mind started to clear a little as the shot did its work, he pulled it out once it was empty and the syringe rolled away under the workbench, into the vitalus puddle from before.

Then, something climbed into his lap.

Goldie was still trembling and shaking a little herself from the manhandling and strangulation, but the collared, golden jabbit that Lucy had believed was smarter than she appeared flopped down against his leg and curled up there, empathetically just as drained as he was.

Thoughts of flesh and hunger and biting and tearing retreated from Lazarin's mind for a time. They would return eventually, but for now he was safe. Without a word he lifted the golden jabbit up and held it to his chest as though he were a child and she a stuffed animal, stroking Goldie's fur with fingers used to the scalpel and surgical saw instead of tactile affection. He did this until her muscles relaxed and she was calm again. It was the least he could do after she had saved what little was left of his pitiful existence.

Soon she began to brux contentedly and nuzzled up against his hazmat suit. His child was dead, and if there were any sense of justice in the universe he should have perished in her place, but as long as he had something of hers, some part that had once been a part of her, perhaps he just might be able to make it until tomorrow, then he would see where he'd go from there. If not for himself, then for the other mordesh he had pledged to save.

And beside all that, he postulated privately that Lucy would have been most upset with him should he allow her precious pet to perish without proper care.

He could manage that in her place.

xxx

"We are doomed. Doomed! We will never discover the cure now." The mordesh with the metal-tinged voice lamented as Ekaterine handed him a pair of pistols, the scavenged spoils of a fallen spellslinger who had died the day before. They were too small for his big hands, but he gripped them possessively anyway.

"Hush Malysh. This is no place for panic." Ekaterine scolded as she hefted the heavy gun she had salvaged for herself. The others were all wielding similar weapons now, save for Dmitriev who had always been outfitted with his powerful resonators. The large, worried mordesh was likely correct in his assumption and she closed her long-lashed eyes briefly to force that ominous thought away. "Is everybody ready?"

She received affirmations with varying degrees of zeal from Mishka, Malysh, Dmitriev and others. The aurin who had raced off to find the assistant and their deadly arsenal of weaponry would have made appropriate additional backup, but they could not wait for him to return any longer. They had all heard that paralyzing, hellish scream. The plan to infuse Lazarin had long since fallen by the wayside after such a sound. There was only one thing left to do.

Dmitriev laughed nervously as he charged up his resonators. "I'm starting to feel like a reaper." He joked.

"You are a physician." Mishka reminded him in a flat, I-don't-understand-humor tone. "Remember that."

Ekaterine reached out for the door controls, her thin lithe fingers wavering a little. "Stand firm." She told them.

But before her fingertips could make contact with the panel the exo-lab door slid open of its own volition. A tall silhouette stood in the threshold, its presence imposing and familiar.

Victor Lazarin peered down at his assembled colleagues through the protective screen of his suit. If he had been shrieking, or crying, or mere minutes away from death earlier he did not show it anymore. He raised an eyebrow at them, mildly curious.

"What is the meaning of this?" He asked.

The squad raised their weapons in reflex anyway, starting from Ekaterine and rolling back all the way to Malysh hiding behind the others. The last thing they'd expected him to do at this point was speak. Lunge for their throats like a possessed demon, more like. The mordesh with the blank-lensed eyes spoke up first. "We, uh, thought that you were… are you…?" He mumbled.

The doctor just stared at them quizzically for a few moments, wondering if his fate was ultimately to be shot in the face by his associates, before he hummed an understanding; "Ah," and tugged off one of his gloves, rolling his right sleeve back to reveal the vitalus tank in his forearm.

The fluid around his arm bones and connecting veins was the brightest glowing, purest blue form of conventional vitalus a mordesh could acquire without having to be the good doctor himself. The lifeless grey slush that had nearly corrupted him now festered in a tank somewhere, ready to be destroyed later on. The group of scientists and non-combatants all sighed in deep relief at this revelation, lowering the weapons they'd prepared to use. These sighs were finally punctuated by Dmitriev exclaiming; "Oh yes, look at that," after checking his datachron one final time. It had updated at last, minutes earlier.

Victor fixed his sleeve again. He smiled slightly, though there was no joy in it. "Is that to your satisfaction?" He asked.

Ekaterine tried to hide her irritation, succeeding only in part. "Sir, with all due respect, do not scare us like that again! We will require your expertise for some time yet, though our sympathies will remain with you."

"Hm," Lazarin pondered, "I shall keep that in mind. Thank you."

Then there was more screaming, (at least not by the doctor this time) and the small aurin biochemist they'd dispatched earlier came pelting down the corridor back to the group, panting with his tails flicking back and forth like a bristly bush. It felt like everything in Blighthaven had been chasing him, from the corrupted dawngrazers and strain peeps to the Weave knew what else. "I couldn't find the assistant." He gasped, close to tears. "I looked _everywhere!_ I don't know, maybe they moved on to Cankertube Swamp, maybe-"

Victor interrupted him by clearing his throat, making it painfully obvious he wanted their little vigilante group to break up and give him right of way. They did so and he strode past them, as stoic as usual. "Ah yes, you have reminded me. I must give them a call shortly. For now, however, I believe I am in the mood for a long, meditative walk. I will hike upon the Harrowing Heights should I be required again."

The heights – that was where they had dumped the ashes from yesterday. Ekaterine chose not to comment on this, but the tired panting aurin slapped a hand over his face and groaned. "Maaaaan, I could've just _called_ 'em! Stupid…"

As he walked past them and down the hall Victor uttered a short, soft whistle that didn't mean anything to the men and woman congregated there, but a few of them shuffled back in surprise as a large golden jabbit scampered out of the threshold too and followed the doctor hot at his heels, her silver collar jangling as she wiggled to keep up.

There wasn't much to live for anymore, but for now…

This was enough.

_-fin_


End file.
